Special Treatment

For more than a century, the key to cancer therapy has always been, "Wait for the pathology report."

The flight from Addis Ababa to Chicago was full of terrors: the rush and noise of takeoff and landing, bumps over the Atlantic, the unfamiliar etiquette of the flight attendants. But for Mariam, the greatest turbulence was mental. She had cancer, and the best doctors in Ethiopia had told her that her disease was hopeless, too extensive to treat with their outmoded radiation machines and inadequate surgery. Go to America, they had told her. Go to the land of promises. Friends in America had made ...

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only.